# Jan vs Open WebUI

> Open WebUI has a score of 52 (D) against Jan's 51.4 (D). Both do local inference. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 44 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Open WebUI has a score of 52 (D) against Jan's 51.4 (D). Both do local inference. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 44 points.

- Jan: grade D, 51.4/100, rank #349 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jan.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jan.json
- Open WebUI: grade D, 52/100, rank #345 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/open-webui.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/open-webui.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Jan for payments & pricing (+40).

Pick Open WebUI for agent ergonomics (+8), security & auth (+20), maintenance & community (+44).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Jan | Open WebUI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 68 | even |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 60 | Open WebUI +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 46 | 54 | Open WebUI +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 43 | 63 | Open WebUI +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 20 | Jan +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 91 | Open WebUI +44 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 73 | Open WebUI +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -8 | |
| **Total** | | **51.4 · D** | **52 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Jan | Open WebUI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Menlo Research | Open WebUI Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Open WebUI License. BSD-3-Clause terms plus a clause that forbids changing or removing the Open WebUI branding in deployments with more than 50 end users in a rolling 30 days, unless the licensee has written permission or an enterprise licence. Code from before set commits stays under MIT or BSD-3-Clause (LICENSE_HISTORY), and contributors sign a CLA |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-09-21 |
| Popularity | 45k stars | 153k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Jan.** Apache-2.0, with installers for macOS, Windows and Linux plus Flathub and the Microsoft Store. No release since 0.8.4 on 23 July 2026, while a security fix waits on main.

**Open WebUI.** Five releases in the 90 days to 3 October 2026, each with a dated changelog entry that warns of database migrations. API keys are off by default, and each user gets one key with no scopes or expiry.

## Before you call either

### Jan

1. Ask the owner to start the server (Settings, Local API Server) or run `jan serve`. Nothing listens until then
2. Call http://127.0.0.1:1337/v1 for the app and localhost:6767/v1 for `jan serve`. The ports differ
3. Read /openapi.json from the running server, not the spec on the docs site, which describes the retired Cortex API
4. Branch on the status code. Error bodies are plain text
5. Keep the bind at 127.0.0.1 on 0.8.4. Trusted Hosts is ignored on 0.0.0.0 until the next release

### Open WebUI

1. Ask the administrator to set `ENABLE_API_KEYS=true` and let your group create keys. `sk-` keys are refused until then
2. Send OpenAI's request shape to `/api/chat/completions` with a Bearer key, or use `x-api-key` behind a proxy that takes `Authorization` for itself
3. Call `/api/models` first and use an `id` from it. Model IDs depend on the instance's connections
4. Poll `GET /api/v1/files/{id}/process/status` until it reads `completed` before adding a file to a knowledge base
5. Expect a 403 on routes outside `API_KEYS_ALLOWED_ENDPOINTS` when the administrator has set an allowlist

## Other comparisons with Jan or Open WebUI

- [AnythingLLM vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-jan.md)
- [AnythingLLM vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-open-webui.md)
- [GPT4All vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-jan.md)
- [GPT4All vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Jan vs Khoj](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-khoj.md)
- [Jan vs llama.cpp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-llama-cpp.md)
- [Jan vs LM Studio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lm-studio.md)
- [Jan vs LocalAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-localai.md)
- [Jan vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama.md)
- [Jan vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Khoj vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-open-webui.md)
- [llama.cpp vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-cpp-vs-open-webui.md)
- [LM Studio vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lm-studio-vs-open-webui.md)
- [LocalAI vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localai-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Ollama vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Open WebUI vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Jan vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-underdog.md)

## Disclosure

- Open WebUI competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and LocalGhost's own about page names it as a competitor. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.